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This post was the reason I started thinking about making my personal blog private and setting up a new blog to share my creative adventures with the world. It was my first attempt at making a tutorial for a DIY, which I did because I couldn’t find any step-by-steps on the web that told me how to create a new cover for my Snoogle Pregnancy Pillow, so I figured that documenting my attempt would probably be helpful to others. And I think it was! Continue reading →

Yesterday marked 22 weeks along for me in this pregnancy! I realized as I looked at one of my (many) pregnancy iPhone apps that it means I’ve got 18 weeks left. Seeing my weeks left under 20 was randomly shocking! 18 weeks is still a long time to go, but it’s a heck of a lot less than 40 weeks where I started out!

I had another Ultrasound today – my 10th one since the beginning of this pregnancy lol! I guess this is the one advantage to starting out infertile and overweight – you get more ultrasounds! Today’s ultrasound was fun (as always) and I got some pretty cool pictures of the Baby – all of which can be seen in my January 2012 Flickr set. At my 20 week ultrasound, we didn’t get any cool pictures of Baby’s face (just some creepy skeletal looking ones). Today, we got a couple of cool pictures of the face where you can actually distinguish a face out of the black and white blobs:

22 Week Ultrasound - Baby's Face

Baby has their left arm up by their head in this picture. Seeing Baby laying there with their arm up by their head totally made me smile, because I definitely do this to this day. In fact, my first baby picture has me in a similar pose:

My First Baby Picture

Seeing Baby again was great. The tech gave me a lot of other pictures of the arms and hands and feet – we’re not looking to find out the gender, so there were no “revealing shots” lol :) The hand and feet shots are kind of interesting, but not all that cute. I think this is the only other really cute shot that we got today:

22 Week US - Baby's Profile

It’s amazing how crunched up in there Baby is! As I type this, Baby is kicking me in the bladder. That’s Baby’s favorite trick: when my bladder gets full and starts impeding on his/her space, Baby starts kicking like a Ninja. I first started to feel Baby’s kicks about 2 weeks ago, on the way to my last ultrasound appointment. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling until after that appointment and I saw where baby’s feet were and made the connection between the little thumps I was just starting to feel and where I could see Baby was positioned. Baby is laying with his/her head to my right side, and then sort of positioned diagonally down and across so his/her feet are down towards my left hip. The placenta is lying on the top and you can actually see it in that last picture above – it looks like a fluffy cloud above the baby. I think because of the position of the placenta, I only feel Baby when he/she kicks way down low – so nowhere that anyone else could feel from the outside yet lol!

Anyway, fun/exciting stuff and because Baby wasn’t in the perfect position, I get another ultrasound in 3 weeks!

So I don’t know how else to explain this but to put it down as a pregnancy side effect – though it’s not one that I’ve ever heard of or read in the many, many books on pregnancy that I’ve picked up – but I’m randomly not as afraid of spiders as I used to be. It’s actually quite shocking. I’ve killed 3 spiders (and attempted murder on 1 more… more on that in a bit…) in the past 2 weeks which probably matches the total number of spiders I’ve killed by myself in my entire life.

You might think, “Yeah, well, you’re alone in your house a lot when Alex works, so that would explain it,” except it doesn’t. Only one of those spider-killing-occasions happened when I was alone (and technically, Alex was home it’s just that he was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him up (although I certainly have woken him up in the past to perform that duty). Oh and today’s attempted murder happened while I was alone. But still – the spider today was so big that usually it would be enough to send me screaming. I mean, seriously – it was the size of a ping pong ball and I discovered it when I moved a towel on a pile of towels to be cleaned by the washing machine, so I almost touched it. But instead I backed away, stared at it for a minute (assessing its ability to run at me – it seemed pretty content on the towels), and then grabbed a Swiffer Sweeper and attacked it. Unfortunately, since it was on top of a pile of towels, I have no clue if I even injured it and my bravery didn’t last to the extent that I would actually investigate that. But I have returned to the basement twice since then, which is a huge step for me.

I’m not saying that I’m not afraid of spiders anymore, because I certainly don’t think that’s the case, but I’m not experiencing that visceral feeling of blind panic as a reaction right now – and that’s kind of nice.

The Fetal Doppler listens to reflections of small, high frequency sound waves that are reflected off of the fetal heart. Since high frequency sound waves do not travel readily through air, a liquid such as water, oil, or special gel (ultrasound lotion) is applied to the fetal doppler as well as the mother’s belly in order for the Fetal Doppler’s probe to detect these sound waves. These signals are picked up by the Fetal Doppler and are processed and amplified so that they are audible in the Fetal Doppler’s speaker or earphone and you are able to hear your baby’s heartbeat, like magic!

So, I don’t know if there’s any scientific evidence behind it, but I could see how high frequency sound waves might be annoying – so I don’t use the doppler all the time. A fetal doppler definitely isn’t a necessary item, but it’s nice to have. A lot of folks advise against getting them because it’s not easy to find the baby’s heartbeat and some mothers freak out when they can’t find it – and that did give me pause before buying one. In the end, I’m glad I did. I’ve only used the doppler a handful of times and there was only one time that I couldn’t find the heartbeat – but I didn’t freak out. I figured that the baby was in an uncooperative position and moved on with my day. In a few weeks, I should hopefully be able to start feeling Baby move around, so hearing the heartbeat won’t be my only way of knowing that Baby is still doing OK in there. For now, though, the times when I do hear it give me incredible peace of mind.

I woke up today and figured that, since I was awake at 6:30am on a Saturday, I had plenty of time to linger in bed, so I broke out the doppler. I was able to find the heartbeat after a few minutes of searching and calculated that it was somewhere in the mid 140s to 150. Since it didn’t take me too long to find the heartbeat today, I thought I’d try giving recording it on my computer a shot. I’d tried this the night I got it, but I couldn’t find the heartbeat again when I was sitting in front of the computer. This time, it worked!

Today I’ve hit fifteen weeks and, according to The Bump, the baby is about the size of an orange. Here’s the blurb from The Bump:

Continuing the march towards normal proportions, baby’s legs now outmeasure the arms. And, finally, all four limbs have functional joints. Your fetus is squirming and wiggling like crazy down in the womb, though you probably still can’t feel the movements.

I definitely can’t feel any movements yet – and I probably won’t be able to for a while – but I’m so excited to hit that milestone! In the meantime, I think I can hear some movements… I bought an inexpensive fetal doppler off of eBay last week and it arrived yesterday. I was so excited to use it – but had low expectations for hearing anything meaningful since I’d been told that I’m “tipped” (which means the baby is positioned more towards my back than normal) and also I have some, ahem, extra padding. But I was pleasantly surprised last night when I used the doppler for the first time and actually heard the heart beat! It did take some searching around, but I found it and was able to calculate a heart rate between 155 and 160 – which is what it was at the last couple of appointments. While I was looking for the heart beat, I heard some random swishing noises – which, I think, according to Google, could have been the baby moving. Of course, it could have been the sound of my blood flowing. Regardless, it was really cool to be able to get an auditory peek in there and amazing to be able to hear Baby’s heart beating!

I’m getting a little thicker now, and I can tell that it’s Baby and not bad eating choices (lol). I’d been using my BeBand for a little while, mostly for comfort, but now I can tell that the only pants that will close are the pants that were big to begin with. I wouldn’t say that I’m showing yet – if anything, I’m sure I just look fatter. Weeee. Ah well. It’s working out for me because, while my boss and the girl who sits next to me know at work, no one else does yet. They’re all guys and guys are so awkward about pregnancy so I figure the longer they don’t know, the less awkward conversations we’ll have.

I’m looking forward to next week – I’ll be 16 weeks, which means that I’ll have four months behind me and I’ve got my next doctor appointment. We should schedule my big anatomy scan ultrasound after that appointment. We’re not planning on finding out the gender, but I’m still really excited for that ultrasound because it’s another sneak peek at the baby!

Today’s my birthday! Yay! I’m 32 – holy crap! As usual, I get a little sentimental on my birthday, so I thought I’d look back at my first birthday post on my blog, which was 9 years ago when I was 23. Um, 23 year old me cracks me up. That July, Beck and I went camping with Eric and Sarah and I also got my first apartment. If you feel so inclined, you can read those posts here. I love that camping included buying a tent a half hour before we went camping and shopping at the Nine West outlet LOL!

(Brief side note: there’s some sort of church service going on in the park that we live on and while I sit here at my computer it alternately sounds like chanting and operatic singing. Bizarre.)

So, 32. That makes me old. You know what else makes me old? I’ll be a mommy in six months. Yep, I haven’t posted about it publicly on my blog yet, but I’m pregnant! Which is, of course, superfreakingamazingandexciting!!! Also, my due date is exactly six months from today. Not that baby will come on that day, I’m sure. But still. 184 days until January 17th!

Baby at 12 weeks

Sigh :) I could stare at that all day. :)

Soyeah – It’s my birthday and my day so far has gone like this: Up at 7:30am to kiss Alex goodbye as he headed out to work (working a 24 hr shift with the fire department today – boo!). Bummed around for a bit ready baby-related books (what else?). Decided that I’d finally get around to making a maternity shirt out of a hot pink empire waisted dress from Target that was too short to wear without leggings. I don’t need to wear maternity shirts yet, but I felt like wearing something “new” today and I am getting a little thicker around the middle, so I figured I might as well convert the dress into a shirt now. It actually turned out pretty cute – maybe I’ll post some pictures later. Oh yeah – so I did that first thing this AM while the cats whined at me until I finished up and fed them. Since then, I’ve been bumming around on the couch and at my computer. I’ll be heading up to CP shortly to hang out by the pool with the family and I think there will be cake and ice cream. :)

About Ali

I'm a mom to a gorgeous little guy named Max. I work outside the home full time, but in my "spare" time I love learning and am always working on projects that let me broaden my knowledge of sewing, photography, and any number of things that pique my interest!